


limenitis archippus

by stickyvalentine



Category: Kings (TV 2009)
Genre: F/M, M/M, Past Abuse, Post-Series, Religious Imagery & Symbolism, a whole lot of butterflies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-03
Updated: 2016-04-03
Packaged: 2018-05-31 01:25:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,354
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6449923
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stickyvalentine/pseuds/stickyvalentine
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When he follows David out into the front courtyard, Jack has to shield his eyes from the sunlight. It’s the first time he’s breathed fresh air in years.</p><p>His eyes shut, the light shining through his lids in red flashes; he thinks it’s the first time he’s ever really breathed.</p>
            </blockquote>





	limenitis archippus

 

There is a filth in Jack. It is a poison running through his veins that, no matter how he tries, no matter how pure or debauched he makes himself, he cannot get out.

It is his father's blood.

The royal bloodline, whatever it was once worth, is nothing now. God has chosen His king and he is not a Benjamin.

Jack has hated what he is for as long as he can remember. That hate has never faded even as the facet of his self it is directed toward has changed. The ever-deepening lines on his forehead and around the corners of his eyes are an unwelcome reminder of his lineage whenever he passes a mirror. His weakness for wine is another.

Michelle, at least, has freed herself from the stigma of their father's name. She is wholly a Shepherd, adored by her people. By David's people. It’s Jack alone who still bears the Benjamin name. Rose is long missing, powerless, Schroedinger’s mother— his sources can find no trace of her. Whenever he is tempted to allow himself to miss her, he remembers Joseph.

Jack has long since abandoned his efforts to become something other than what he is. He thrives as best he can on his tainted bloodline.

 

-

 

Once his last wisp of hope has been carried out of his chambers with Lucinda some weeks into his imprisonment, Jack finally accepts that there is no escape from his father’s prison. It is closer to a year before he rediscovers the rage that has simmered in him since the day he’d stopped being a child. A year of dully marking lines in the back of a textbook from his childhood each morning that he wakes, alone, without hope, and nightmarishly sober. Thomasina had arranged for him the finest library anyone with a life-sentence might hope for, and he's working his way through it, thoughts still foggy, when he feels it all at once, acute and fire-bright: a rage that rushes through his entire body, fills and wakes him up.

It is fury at his father, of course, and his mother too, but the anger burns brightest and longest for David. What fit of foolishness, what half-remembered dream, had made him offer David a place at his side? That error in judgment ought to have been the first sign he was not made to rule. How could he have thought that a man like David would stand behind Jack without eclipsing him? He calls to the sun and absorbs it so there is none left to shine on Jack.

On long and lonely nights, Jack soothes himself to sleep with the image of his hands around David's neck, white on gold and red. This dream carries him through the endless repetition of dull days and duller nights, this conviction: he will see David again. He will have his chance and he will not waste it. He will take back what was taken from him.

 

Life as a royal prisoner is reliable, predictable, dull to the point of deadliness. Breakfast, brought by the same tow-headed guard each morning, changes reliably, seasonally. In spring, it's one egg, two strips of bacon, coffee, toast with honey to spread.

News of the world outside the palace walls is sparse, but made less so by the appointment of a guard who takes a shine to Jack. At first, this shine presents in ways that are at best useless-- a finer spoon for his boiled egg-- and at worse, mildly discomfiting-- the unwavering feeling of the guard's eyes on Jack when he isn't looking, only for the guard's gaze to fix on the ground when Jack tries to meet his eye. Charm is as charm does and in this case, charm does very little. At least until the newspapers begin peeking out from beneath his toast in the morning.

The first day he takes it for a trap set by his father and, leaving the black and white pages untouched, feels some small amount of triumph that, once recognized, he tries quickly to quash. But when a week passes and the newspapers keep appearing, accompanied now by a wounded look on his guard’s face and Jack can no longer resist the lure of information. As he finishes his meal, he slips the paper between the pages of his book-- a positively riveting treatise on continental bee-keeping-- and once alone, slips into the bathroom (there is no lock but neither is there a guard in the palace who'd intrude on his propriety unless prompted by Silas, so there is at least the illusion of propriety) and devours the news-- most of the reporting is innocuous. Jack sees Silas's fingerprints on each story, smoothing the edges and refocusing his shine. But there’s something else there and Jack has always been good at reading between the lines.

 

-

 

One morning in late spring, Jack lifts the cover on his breakfast tray and there, in place of honey, is grape jelly, chemically sweetened and lumpy to spread, sticky down his throat as he swallows, but Jack wipes his mouth and grins, says loud and clear, "Honey."

His guard's gaze snaps instantly from the carpet to his face. It's the only thing outside of "thank you" that Jack has said to him since he appeared five months past. “That lovely honey you were bringing me, the bright spot in my day, I miss it.” His guard blinks his doe eyes at Jack, stunned. “What happened-- someone forgot to go shopping?"

He watches as nerves, confusion, suspicion spread across the guard's face, but no understanding. If he's a weapon, he's well used and duller for it. Not sharp and wasted, like Jack.

"No, no, this household runs far too smoothly for such an oversight-- which means," Jack pauses, wants to relish this first, small victory. Something is thumping rabbit-quick in his chest. "It might surprise you to know, but I'm something of a honey buff. I've been reading this illuminating little tome about honey production on the continent. Did you know that a blight three years past wiped out most of the colonies in Gilboa, meaning that any honey good enough for consumption in the royal household has been imported from Gath since the treaty was--"

The guard springs into motion, seizing Jack by the pressed collar of his shirt. "Stop it," he hisses, face stricken, sweetly and weakly, a mouse with tail caught in trap. “You shut your mouth, Prince."

Jack's elbow strikes his breakfast tray as he falls back, a plate, his egg-cup shattering as they crash to the floor. A wild laugh rips its way out of his mouth. "Sanctions, right? Sanctions against Gath. Last week was the anniversary of the treaty and no mention in the paper of Silas making a visit to honour it?" The guard's face is purpling, he can hear the footfalls growing louder as well as Jack can, must know better, but he has a look in his eyes, the same look of wild panic he'd seen in his father's eyes (in his own eyes) soon after the arrival of David. "So sanctions and cut ties, but no war. Which means there’s an uprising in Gath and if it’s got you all _this_ scared then it can only be Dav--"

The guard's big fist slams into his temple as the door swings open. Jack's ears ring, his vision spins, can't fix on Thomasina's cold gaze ticking from Jack to the guard, the spilled food to the crumpled newspaper. He's still laughing as the guard releases his collar, as he drops into unconsciousness. David is coming and his father is terrified.

 

Jack dreams:

(He is sitting in a forest, at a banquet table loaded with piles of fresh fruit-- figs, grapes, pomegranates, apples glazed in honey. Trussed in the centre of table, a head of venison, waiting to be carved. His mouth waters. He's never been so hungry.

At the far end sits David, his head adorned in that damned butterfly crown, his smiling mouth slick and sweet with honey. "It's yours," he says and the sunlight glints off his mouth, off the flat of the blade in Jack's hand. Trussed in the centre of the table, amid the fruit and sweetness, is Silas.

"It's yours," says David and Jack's never been so hungry. He doesn't hesitate, presses his blade to flesh and cuts but, in place of spurting blood; the flutter of gold-orange wings. The butterfly flits out through the wound and heads up, away, toward the sun--)

Jack awakens.

 

Morning finds Jack in possession of an unsightly bruise, a library minus all its non-fiction titles, and the sort of headache he once associated with hangovers. He’d rather not move.

The door opens as he's laid there, a sitting cushion pressed over his face, trying to remember the exact tang of the grapes that grew in the garden at the Vineyard, his favourite. His mother saying "they're not yet ripe, my love. Wait a week and you can have all the grapes you'd like, positively gorge yourself." Jack nodding obediently and then dragging Michelle out to the garden when they were meant to be grooming horses with their governess, the grapes’ bright greenness and how he couldn't wait, he just couldn't. Even as Michelle clamped her lips shut, his grimy fingers snatched one from a lower plant and the tart pop of it between his teeth and his cheek, like how sunlight would taste and--

"Prince Jack." A voice he doesn’t recognize, practiced and steady. "I'm called Abigail. I'll be looking after you. I served six years in the Gilboan army but it's always been my dream to serve in the royal house--"

Jack groans loudly from beneath the cushion in lieu of response. Moments pass as he tries to get back to that country garden, that grape vine, but when no door clicks shut, when no footsteps recede, he drags himself up to examine his new keeper.

"Not to be rude," Jack says, rudely. "But I really don't care."

She's hard-eyed and jawed but the lines of her face relax in increments as she examines him right back, "You will." If Thomasina, vetting his guards, thought that appointing someone like herself would tighten security then she must've forgotten how she'd favoured Jack as a child. This, he can use.

Abigail, it turns out, is almost as ambitious as Jack had once been, and just as flip about bending rules. Days when Thomasina is out of the house she'll stand in Jack's room for hours, pestering him about the inner working of the royal household, the structure of court. Weeks pass, her questions grow more pointed-- about details as small as when the windows in each room were last replaced and as vital as where scripture stands on elective monarchies. The relevance these questions have to Abigail’s service in the royal household are tenuous but the conversations are the most stimulating Jack's had in years. Still, when Jack wakes up morning and Abigail is just-- gone, he isn't especially shocked. Neither is he especially shocked that no one is sent to replace her. Their final conversation had been about _jure uxoris_. Jack has always been good at reading between the lines.

 

-

 

Alone again, Jack spirals a little, he flickers slightly, but though the kingship and all its glory have faded from sight, Jack does not. Two months spent in atrophy, but one day, slouched at his desk, he sees the sunlight out of his tiny window refracting off some small shimmery thing that flits by and he is reminded of a dream. It brings him slowly back to life. He begins to think again. To make plans.

Captivity affects different people differently. He'd watched Lucie get more listless and lifeless with each day. He'd had nothing to give her, no affection and no status as apology for the absence of it. The old king, the undead king, the one his father had secreted away in the crypts for his moments of weakness, he'd gone loopy but stayed sharp. Jack heard tell that his father wooed Abaddon with steak and wine, sought his counsel, that Abaddon walked out on his own two feet, a free man, and disappeared into thin air. Jack heard tell that this happened not one week after David spent a night in the neighbouring cell.

His father visits him more frequently these days, at first just to jibe at him, taunt him. Jack is immoveable, non-responsive. Later, his father rants, rages, and reminisces at turns. He guzzles wine, he lashes out. He is losing, Jack knows.

But Jack feels none of the expected victory. Jack has already lost. He only has one one egg left and it's been left out too long, it's developing hairline cracks. He might as well toss it into a basket.

From what he's read-- and he's read a good deal, if not when he was young (all the over-qualified tutors and limitless libraries his father foisted upon him, preparing him for an office he couldn’t hold) then now, when all he has is time, time and books-- war is a messy thing, revolution messier still. His mother had structured their monarchy, their aristocracy, around the concept of a Benjamin dynasty. The writings don't allow for a king outside the bloodline, divinely anointed or otherwise, and it will need restructuring once David’s won. David has no policy training, didn't grow up with the machinations of the aristocracy deafening his ears, and his revolutionaries know only how to topple, not how to rebuild. If Jack can offer a plan of installation upon David's victory, he may yet save himself from obscurity.

He has no great goodness, no divine selection. This is what he has: cunning and patience.

He stops fighting, he learns. The son, hot with rage, can strike a killing blow against the father, but not without bearing one himself and Jack finds, to his own soft shock, that he wants to live.

 

-

 

When the revolution finally arrives, Jack is reading _The Once and Future King_. Solitude has given him an affinity for irony.

He wishes half-heartedly for some music to drown out the panicked noises coming from the hall, but his father had taken away most of his privileges in a fit of pique a week ago. He seemed to blame Jack for the progress David’s resistance had been making with his people.

“A disease,” he’d called them, hissing into Jack’s ear, holding him in a painfully tight embrace. When his mother’s disappearance had been discovered, Silas had begun visiting even more frequently, his behaviour increasingly erratic.

The last time Jack saw him, earlier that morning—a day now celebrated annually in Gilboa as The Festival of the People — the Royal seal ring he wore had slashed across Jack’s cheek, a backhand to the face leaving a deep cut, the signs of which are still visible years later as a thin white scar, winding its way across Jack’s right cheekbone.

His father is always with him.

Blocking out the chaos outside his room is easy enough. Jack is accustomed to building a world of his own. He’d become quite practiced at it in that first year living with Lucinda. He had found if you treat someone like they don’t exist for long enough, they begin to fade away.

There, of course, had been no heir and one morning he had looked up from his reading to see Thomasina leading her away, arm at her waist, supporting her weight. He noticed her for what had seemed like the first time in weeks-- she’d grown shockingly thin and so pale, her once glossy hair limp and dull. He’ll never see her again, but years later, when the shame has ceased to paralyze, he’ll send feelers out and find she’s settled in a small town just on the Gath side of the border. He’ll see David’s warm hand on her marriage, her daughter, her job at the local newspaper. They’ll never discuss it.

Jack is comfortable by himself now, posture precise and upright as he sits at his desk, basking in the light streaming from his ornately barred window.

The hall has quieted enough that he makes out the steady steps of booted feet approaching. The door unlocks, swings open, and in walks Abigail, his erstwhile guard. Weapon up, she sweeps the room with the same laser focus she once applied to quizzing him on court policy, and fixes that hard gaze on him again. Jack takes a breath, steels himself, but there is no click of trigger, no explosion of sound and agony. Just a single, sharp nod.

His breath is still caught in his throat when Abigail lowers her weapon and leans out the door, "All clear in here, Sir."

Standing in the doorway, framed in profile by the afternoon light that just moments ago had shone over Jack's shoulders, is the saviour of the Gilboan people, the leader of the rebellion, his brother-in-law. God's chosen himself. And he's grown a scruffy blond beard.

"So," Pale and exhausted from years in a gilded cage, Jack still smirks like a Benjamin. "The cocker spaniel has become a wolf."

David turns at last to face him, eyes older and wilder than Jack remembered, and does the most surprising thing. He smiles.

"Jack," he says and then stops, like his name is a complete thought, a full sentence.

The flicker of his eyes takes the measure of Jack, of his chambers, with the same sharp efficiency as Abigail. Whatever he's looking for, whether he finds it or not, isn’t clear to Jack, but his voice and eyes are warm when he speaks again. "You look like you could use some fresh air. Will you take a walk with me, Jack?"

When he follows David out into the front courtyard, Jack has to shield his eyes from the sunlight. It’s the first time he’s breathed fresh air in years.

His eyes shut, the light shining through his lids in red flashes; he thinks it’s the first time he’s ever really breathed.

 

Jack's eyes adjust to the sun slowly. He's just stopped squinting when David finally speaks. "Your father isn't here, Jack. Do you know where he is?"

Instinct bids him sneer and say something like, _Yes, the father who disowned and imprisoned me for usurping him has confided in me his escape routes_ but that was the old Jack, the one who got himself locked in here. The Jack who intends to get himself out stays his tongue and considers this newer, older David. His shoulders are broad and sharp, drawn back by the hands clasped behind him. It's parade rest from a man in ripped jeans and a flak jacket that's a size too big. He wants something from Jack.

Implication of knowledge could save Jack’s life, if it's in danger. Or it could sentence him to excruciating torture for information he doesn't have to give. Jack tries something new. He tries the truth: "I didn't even know he was gone. He never confided much in me," but can't quite tame the hard twist of his mouth when he says, "as you well remember."

The breeze in the garden is clean and sweet. A bee buzzes past his ear and he has to actively tamp down the frisson of pleasure. "My sister. How is she?"

David brightens, his shoulder relaxing minutely, "She’s well-- and little Abe too. They'll fly in tomorrow. Michelle's already got her health care proposal ready for submission when my cabinet is nominated."

"Nepotism has its perks," Jack says and David actually huffs a small laugh.

Jack watches the bee float through the hyssop his mother's gardener had planted years ago. He chooses his words carefully. "For a long time, I blamed you for my situation--"

David doesn’t let him finish. "You were right to. When I was up against the firing squad, I prayed to God for peace and he sent me you. You saved my life and I repaid you with betrayal. Jack, I am sorry for that. Truly."

Jack has waited long enough to speak this. He finishes regardless. "--But then I realized, if I wasn't strong enough to overcome my father, I couldn't well expect you to be." Then he processes what David has said.

David’s sincerity shouldn’t be surprising, perhaps. It’s nothing new from him, but Jack can’t bring himself to trust it. Not yet.

"This time I had help," David says. "A lot of it. I’m grateful for the counsel you gave Abigail, Jack. Thanks to you this coup has an infrastructural backbone. You saved our people a great deal of anguish. I am in your debt. And I'm afraid I seek your help once again."

Jack's grimace is reflexive and quickly suppressed. "You're the leader of this country, its soon-crowned king. What help could a disgraced son of Silas offer?"

"I can command an army, I can lead our people," David says. "God-given gifts, honed in the years I've been away. But it wasn't me who grew up in court, who was trained since birth to rule. It wasn't me God made a prince. I have a lot to learn from you, Prince Jack, if you'll teach me.”

"And if I don't want to teach?" There are no guards in sight, but that means little. The thought of running from David makes him cringe internally, but--

"Then you're free to go," David says hurriedly. "You can walk out of this garden, no one will stop you or chase you. I want-- I need you to know you are free, Jack."

So Jack can walk away, but where would he go. Into obscurity? He hasn't taken a poll but he's reasonably certain he's still a pariah and David has just enumerated all of his bankable skills. He's fair sure there aren't many other positions that require them, at least not in peacetime. He'd put his egg in this basket months ago and now it was hatching. Jack finds he wants to see it through.

"Alright," Jack says. "On one condition."

"Name it."

He can feel David's eyes on him. He stops, turns to face his king, swallows whatever sourness that thought leaves in his mouth. "You will never call me Prince Jack again."

He searches David's face for the man he knew years ago, whose face was an open book of every vulnerability, every righteous outrage, every hope and hurt. There may be a trace of that man in the sudden stretch of David's smile, but his eyes are another story, a story he knows but written in a language he can't quite read. _I don't know this man_ , Jack realizes.

David extends his hand. "You drive a hard bargain, but: it's a deal."

Jack takes it.

 

- 

 

He doesn't lay eyes on his sister until a week before Coronation Day. By then they've settled in the Vineyard, the motorcade shuttling David into the city as needed. The weeks since the coup have been a flurry of staff appointments, political maneuvering, and logistical planning for the ceremony itself. At times, he finds himself doing something achingly familiar, though he knows he's never done it before. He talks the caterer into adding salmon to a menu because he knows a courtier who has been speaking ill of David will break out in hives when he eats it. He lets a useful scoop trickle down to a gullible reporter. The wool industry has been suffering so he gifts David with a handmade sweater and a fine overcoat that he’ll wear because they are from Jack. The realization that these are tricks he’d learned from watching his mother is a slap in the face. He flinches, he rallies. He carries on.

David has ceded to most of Jack's suggestions, and for those he hasn't, he’s mostly offered fair compromise. They've only run into one brick wall and it has relaxed Jack marginally to see his old foe reappear, even momentarily. Any time Jack tries to raise the topic of the crown with David, he stonewalls.

"Silver, gold, ornate, simple, I don't care, but David, it's hard to have a coronation without a crown."

Each time, David smiles indulgently and says, "I'll have a crown. The butterflies will come."

The twentieth time they have this conversation, it's impossible to suppress his eye roll. "Of course they will. But should they get caught in traffic, this simple gold circlet will be a fine back-up."

"We don't need a back-up, Jack. They'll come." David’s voice is serene. Jack wants to punch him in the head.

 

(The butterflies had come of course. Jack had watched from the room behind the balcony as, at the very climax of David's speech, a cloud of trembling orange had settled around his head and then dispersed, leaving a perfect circlet of monarch butterflies fluttering in place around his golden head. When he’d smiled at Jack after, there’d been only the slightest hint of smugness and Jack had never been so relieved to be wrong.)

 

He’s on the phone, trying to browbeat the royal jeweler, or any jeweler in the kingdom, into making a crown against the King's express orders, when an anxious page appears in front of him.

Like everyone outside of David's inner circle, the page won't meet his eyes as he stammers. "Mr. Benjamin, the Queen has arrived. She's asked to see you."

Jack's blood freezes. How? Distantly he hears the tinny protestations of the jeweler on the phone and snaps it shut. _How?_

Then he wakes up-- Rose Benjamin, hidden in the mountains somewhere, is a queen no longer. David's wife is the queen now. Michelle Shepherd is the queen and she wants to see Jack, so he goes to her.

He finds her in his mother's old rooms-- the queen's chambers, he corrects himself. Her hair is long and loose and she's wearing a salmon shift-dress.

She doesn't look like a queen. She looks like his sister.

A voice in the back of his mind says: _We’ll need to fix that_ , but most of him sags with shocking relief.

"Hi, Jack," she says, her voice is deceptively even, but oh, Jack knows better. The haughty lift of her jaw and the tightness in her shoulders are as familiar to him as the sound of his own voice, but it's the look on her face that strikes him. It's the same expression, he realizes, that he couldn't parse on David's face, that day in the garden. Here, on a face he's known since before birth, it's easy to read. She wants to hug him, she holds herself back.

"Hi, big sister,” he says. "Or should I say hello, Queen Michelle?”

Her face crumples when he speaks and all that finishing school composure goes with it. "Oh Jack, no," she says and she's reaching for him just as he reaches for her. He turns his face into her hair, half-expecting the tart smell of the green apple shampoo they both used as children or the scent from after they turned 12 and Michelle began disappearing behind closed doors come bath-time and would emerge smelling flowery, powdery, strange. But those Jacks, those Michelles are long gone.

"You left me behind," part of him wants to say as she clings to him, but doesn't. He doesn't want to fight with her, today or ever again, and anyway, he knows what her reply would be: "You made yourself impossible to take."

A soft knocking at the door startles them apart. Jack feels the way someone woken suddenly from a nap might feel, disoriented, even a little drunk.

"Ma'am, the prince is awake."

Jack keeps his face carefully blank as Michelle's eyes flick to him. Her smile is tight as she thanks the nurse but her voice is warm. The people will love Michelle as Queen even more than they loved her as Princess.

"Jack," she says, her face open and sweet, her extended hand shaking just a little. He hadn't known how much he'd hated being away from her until just now. "Would you like to meet your nephew?"

Jack takes her hand.

 

-

 

So David becomes King, his sister a queen. They rebuild a world from the ashes of the Benjamin Empire and David asks Jack to remain at their side.

As he bled for his country, his father, he now bleeds for David-- in battle, commanding troops, in public, fielding gossip and rumours, and in private, making quiet suggestions that have the power to shake the nation-- and still it is not enough.

The poison is still in him.

He does good now, mostly. With David as king, Gilboa does good. But it is still Jack who David turns to for matters a good king should not occupy himself with. It is Jack who silences the treasonous who threaten the peace they've built, making the ugly decisions so that David can remain untarnished.

Jack eats too little now, sleeps even less.

Ira, his aide, is utterly incompetent, incapable of remembering even the most basic appointments and instructions, but every time Jack attempts to fire him, David intervenes. "He's trying," David reasons, with his bargaining smile. "He's a true believer."

Jack pretends it is David’s authority that stays his hand when it comes to Ira, not the deep dimple on the right side of his mouth or the familiar way he speaks to Jack, no matter who else is listening.

"Yes," Jack sighs. "What is it— you’ve forgotten to tell me about another meeting with Samuels?" It's no skin off Jack's back-- dealings with the Reverend may be the most infuriating part of his day.

Ira's eyes widen comically, panicking until Jack's quirking mouth betrays his teasing. "N-no, sir." Small pleasures: the ease with which Jack can fluster him.

"Then why do you bother me? I'm working." They both blessedly ignore the bottle of wine that sits opened on his desk, the emptied glass that leaves stains as it doubles as a paperweight for piles of reports he ought to have reviewed already.

"I’m sorry, sir. It's just-- you said to inform you if there was any word of a place called Serenity or the woman known as Thomasina."

Jack’s stomach clenches, the wine rising up his throat as bile. He grits his teeth, manages a furious sounding, “Tell me what you know.”

And Ira tells him what has become of his father.

 

- 

 

"You're drinking again." David's voice is an arc of light, slicing through the heavy silence of Jack's study. It makes his head ache.

He can hear David make a slight movement behind him, the fine rustle of a suit made by a tailor of Jack's choosing-- Michelle has never had an eye for fashion. He leaves her to her civil rights and her universal health care and takes care of that which she tries, but fails, to sweep underneath the Persian rug of the king’s sitting room.

"Leave the light off," he says and it comes out slightly commanding, a bit of crown prince left in him yet. He does not apologize and, though it is well within his right, David would never even think of reprimanding him. The papers claim that David is too lenient a ruler, that he shares his power too well.

David won't let Jack force them to say otherwise.

"My father's been found." Jack would swear upon the flash of David's eyes in the dark as he says it. "He's dead."

To his surprise, Jack's voice does not break or tremble. Instead, it mirrors his words, sounding hollow and worn out. It sounds like something he's been saying for years.

"Thomasina has _summoned_ me. To collect the—" he takes a swig from the bottle of wine, glass long forgotten, " —the body."

There is a long moment of silence where Jack doesn't breathe, where he floats away on the waves of David’s inhalations and exhalations, where he is not a former prince or Silas’s once-son. He is simply—

“Where was he?” David’s voice is careful.

“The countryside.” He is so unbearably tired.

A beat and Jack can hear the slight smile, a shade off wry, in David’s voice. “Of course he was. Serenity is found where you make it.”

“I’ll leave tomorrow morning,” Jack says. His back aches. He must have had more wine than he thought, his head fogged and heavy.

“I’ll join you.” He can’t and they both know it—Court convenes tomorrow morning. Even Jack missing from his usual seat in the back of the gallery will cause a stir in the press, though it will assuredly please many of the Ministers. The King missing from Court will be a catastrophe.

Of course, there is Michelle to think of as well, Jack remembers belatedly. She’ll need comfort from her husband. As unaffected as she will pretend to be, she was Silas’s puppy for too many years not to grieve for him.

As though he’d read Jack’s mind: “I’ll stay with Michelle tonight and leave with you in the morning,” David says in his official voice, the one that permits no argument. “Silas deserves that much.”

 _Of course he does_ , Jack thinks, bitterness making his tongue taste sour, though perhaps that’s the wine. Silas, who had tried to kill them all, more than once, and who had fled rather than face his punishment, deserves to have the King mourn him.

“You should rest,” David says finally, when Jack doesn’t respond, and pulls the door shut behind him as he leaves. Jack thinks he might have looked back over his shoulder, but he can’t be sure.

He stays there, in the dark, until morning.

 

-

 

The car cuts through the grey dawn, gleaming black, fast enough that the paparazzi that gather as close to the Palace as is legally possible cannot see who rides within it.

Jack feels ugly and pulled taut, slumping so his forehead rests against the cool glass of the back seat window.

He has yet to say a word to David, only responding to his greeting of, “Good morning,” with a nod, but he can’t resist noting petulantly as the cameras snap at their tinted windows, “This will throw the cabinet into a tizzy, you know.”

"Michelle said the same thing," David says, his voice rich with amusement. It doesn't surprise Jack. For all that time and situation have changed them; he and Michelle remain two sides of the same, slightly tarnished coin.

Still, there are things Jack knows about David that Michelle does not.

That when kissed, David will always kiss back. It is not in him to take without giving, no matter whom or why.

That when David is at last more comfortable in the finely tailored suits Jack has made for him than in his dress blues, the man she loves will be gone forever.

And that time may soon come.

David says nothing else and Jack is hardly in the mood for making conversation. The silence, the trees rushing by soothe Jack into dozing off.

He dreams.

 

(Sunlight, a field, a hand outstretched.)

He's had this dream before.

(The slow, shaky crack of a cocoon, the unfolding of sticky gold-orange wings. An extension of legs, a first fluttering, then another. Flight.)

 

He wakes to the crunch of gravel and David's hand on his shoulder.

"We'll walk from here," he’s saying as Jack blinks the dream away, and then leaning forward, speaking to their driver. "We should be finished here in an hour or two. I'll call. Thank you, Ben.”

"The fewer people who know about this the better," David says as the car pulls away, anticipating Jack's complaint. "And I thought the walk might do us some good."

The day has already turned hot and dry. Jack squints from behind his sunglasses at the high, heavy sun. "You just want to be able to pester me about this viceroyalty thing while I can't escape."

David chuckles. He's dressed comfortably, in a corduroy jacket and jeans, what Jack calls his Shepherd clothes, so he mustn't expect any conflict wherever they're going. "If it weren't you I wanted to name viceroy, you'd call it a wise decision."

"Maybe," Jack allows. "But it would depend on your choice of viceroy and in this case your choice is unwise. A disgraced former prince whose questionable political and personal choices are all too public is hardly the best candidate. And he's so ill-tempered too."

Jack could kill for a drink. It must be 11:30 by now.

"I wouldn't say ill-tempered. I would say… impassioned. Yes, his bad moods make even the most composed palace aide cower in fear, but they have the same effect on reporters who harass the royal family and foreign dignitaries who won't cooperate during diplomatic talks. And his better moods are so good that even the King himself strives to curry his favour."

"Let's not forget his atrocious taste in men." Jack decides he’s grateful for the piercing sun. It’s much easier to meet David’s eyes from behind sunglasses. "And then there's the small matter of his infamous treason."

David stops abruptly in his tracks and, hands on Jack’s shoulders, turns Jack's body toward him. "None of this would've been possible without you, Jack. My people owe you so much, I owe you so much. And the viceroyalty appointment would give the people a chance to see that. To see you as you truly are."

It must be the sun blazing behind David's head that makes his blue eyes glint gold.

 _I love you_ , Jack thinks reflexively. _I love you, I love you._ He's never said it aloud, not to David, not even if it's something that brothers-in-law can say to each other, not even if he feels David's gaze sometimes, soft on his face while he's whispering it to Abe, peppering his fat little face with kisses. Jack might lie for a living, for Gilboa, for David, but even he knows that there are some things too true to be said aloud.

Over David's shoulder, Jack's eyes catch on a sagging farmhouse. He swallows, grins lopsidedly-- it's weak, but he trusts David not to call him on it-- and says, "looks like we're here."

 

 _I'm fine_ , he thinks defiantly and almost believes it. Then the front door opens. It isn’t Thomasina.

The woman who steps out is his mother's opposite in almost every way. Her dark hair is tied in a messy plait, her dress is wrinkled, and she's certainly not wearing lipstick. Though her face is tired she's still arrestingly beautiful. Her eyes skitter toward Jack and away, back to David in the time it takes him to draw a breath. "My king," she says unsteadily and her lovely, sad mouth twitches toward an attempt at a polite smile. "Come in."

As soon as his eyes adjust to the warm dim, they're drawn to a dark wood table in the centre of the room.

On the table, surrounded by innumerable low-burning candles, is his father. No. Not his father. A body. Silas's body. His father is long gone. This is just a body, arms folded, coins over eyes.

His father's woman goes to stand at the head, next to a teenage boy, his dark eyes big and shiny in the candlelight. Their bodies are held too tight, like the tension in their shoulders is the only thing keeping them upright. She grasps for his hand and, though he's a teenage boy standing in front of his king, he lets her hold it. That desperate cling, the dishes piled in the sink, the weak grasp at composure in the face of unwanted company, it's a tableau Jack recognizes. This is a family grieving. Silas's woman is a bereft mother and the boy is-- He is a son.

 

Jack doesn't even get the satisfaction of slamming the back door before David follows him out. He stalks toward the trees but stops short, as if from the pull of David's damned leash. The back garden is lush, if untended, and a high wire fence surrounds it. It smells like life. The sun gleams off his ceremonial gun as he pulls it out of the holster beneath his jacket, sparking silver despite its disuse. He knows now why, head foggy and wine-soured, he'd strapped it on that morning.

Before he’s taken a step toward the farmhouse, David has moved back into his line of vision.

“Get out of my way.” Jack’s voice is a snarl, ripped from his throat in the heat of this final betrayal. By now, nothing his father does—did, should surprise him. And yet.

Not a flicker of fear passes over David’s face as he stares down the barrel of Jack’s handgun. They’ve been in similar positions before. By now it must seem commonplace to David.

Jack has always been quick to anger and in recent years, without the looming fear of any display of weakness his father’s court had cultivated in him as he grew, quicker still to express it. Ira could attest to this firsthand.

This, however, is another breed of emotion altogether. It’s not anger Jack feels, but fury, risen from deep in his gut where it’s simmered since his father’s last strike.

He nudges the barrel forward. It drags across David’s lips.

He’s dimly aware of sunny greenness of his periphery, of the awful sympathetic slant of David’s eyebrows, and of his own shallow breathing. He sounds like a frightened animal— _prey_ , his father’s voice seethes in his mind. David's voice is sincere, steady. He speaks with that familiar, easy authority that so often stays Jack's hand. He isn't at all surprised, Jack realizes. He knew.

“I made a promise to Silas. Besides, I know Se— the boy. He has no designs on the throne. He is no threat to me or to anyone.” _Or to you_ , David doesn’t say.

Jack scoffs a derisive laugh.

“Jack, you share a father.”

“I have no father,” he snaps. "Not anymore. You think that this is about that-- bastard? You think I didn't know about this place?"

He'd known there was something, somewhere, heard his father's guards whisper about Serenity and known it was where his father went when he wanted to escape from his kingdom, to get away from his family. It's not as though Jack hadn't understood the urge. He still fights daily to escape the bonds of his family, to embrace the new one that David offers time and time again.

For Jack, love has never been some easy, sunlit thing. His love seethes. It corrupts. One more way he’s like his father.

But his father had come here. He'd smiled at and played with and loved a son who was not Jack. He'd loved a woman who wasn't Rose, who never maneuvered or asked anything of him he was unwilling to give. Jack had seen it when she opened that door, her face as open in grief as it must have been in happiness, generous with it, ready to share it with David and familiar--

"He brought you here, didn't he?" David drops his gaze, just for a second, and he knows he is right. “You were nobody, the one who stole his favour, and still he brought you here. You've known all this time. You and Michelle have been lying to me this whole time. I've been so blind, how could I have thought that--"

He chokes the rest of that sentence back in. His stomach churns as David finally speaks: "I've been here, yes Jack. Your father brought me. Once. But she doesn't know. Michelle. I never told her. She'd want to know him, to come here or even to bring them to the capital." _And she'd tell you_ , he doesn't say. HIs breath fogs the surface of Jack's pistol as he speaks.

"And he was a threat to your claim. You couldn't kill him, but you couldn't have him recognized as Silas's son." Jack summons a laugh but it comes out raw. "So why not tell me? You know I would have taken care of it. God knows I've ordered enough killings in your name." His finger twitches on the trigger, his thumb inching toward the safety. "It'll be my honour to do it for you now. My King."

For a second he believes himself. That he wants to kill a sweet-eyed boy just because they'd had the misfortune to share a father, the same corrupted blood. He hears his father's blood roar through his veins, into his ears and it burns. These long years, he'd thought that getting rid of his father, of shedding his desire for approval would rid him of it, but even in the face of this most final absence, that poison remains.

As he had served David, as he had repaired his relationship with Michelle, as he had relished the intrigue of court and the challenge of rebuilding a monarchy, it had been this all along: His father, the once-king Silas, could not die in obscurity and so would eventually return. When he did he would see Jack, thriving and triumphant, and he would know he had judged his son wrongly. And he would regret all he'd done. 

Jack could see now that this had been the secret truth at his core all along, a child's conviction, the hardest to break. All that time Jack had thought himself freed of Silas, had thought he was forging a new life for himself from the ruins of the one Silas had razed, he had only been waiting for the inevitable return. His father had been gone but Jack hadn't really been free. Now his father has died and still he hangs as a weight around Jack's neck.

But even his persistent foolishness has its limits and as quickly as these realizations come, the sharp blade of his mind applies itself as it would to any other impossibility: even if Jack's infantile prediction had come to pass, if Silas had reappeared in court and re-engaged in a long-since-lost battle with David, there would have been no acknowledgement of Jack, let alone respect or regret. Jack trusts the logic of this and still, inside of him that boy who'd curled at the foot of his father's bed and begged to be allowed to sleep there poisons all that Jack had thought he'd gained for himself.

Except.

His father had wanted an heir who was adept at politics and able to charm the press, who could sacrifice his self-interest for the good of Gilboa and make hard choices to benefit its people, who would wage war and fight for peace in equal measure. The Jack of today is all of these; he is very nearly the son his father had always claimed to want. Except. Silas had wanted a son who was dedicated entirely to his country's future, who put nothing and no one ahead of the nation's best interests. Such things have certainly been said of him, though mostly to his face by those currying his favour, but were they true?

 

-

 

He thinks now of a conversation with Michelle a few weeks past. She'd asked him to take a stroll through the Vineyard’s gardens on a rare afternoon when they were both mostly free. He had assumed Michelle was doing her part for David's campaign for Jack's viceroyalty and said as much, even as he accepted. There’s been little he’d deny her since their reconciliation. 

He'd soon be proven right, but for the time being let himself be led into the vineyard as Michelle denied her agenda. "My only scheme is trying to get some face time with the king's most loyal subject. My brother is busy these days."

Jack had cocked an eyebrow at that. "And by ‘most loyal subject’ you mean me?"

"David would say as much himself," Michelle said and they smiled at each other when she amended, "if he wouldn't cut out his own tongue before he'd refer to you as subject." Michelle's smile was at once intimate, sharing her amusement with him, and private, contemplating her husband's grace. He forgot, at times, how he'd missed her during those lost years. He’d remembered then.

"Then is this a confession of treason, sister?" Jack had spoken thoughtlessly, his question half-joke, half-distraction from any close examination of David's opinion of him, and he had expected a response in kind. When he saw his sister's face was sober and severe as she stopped and turned to him in the back garden, he'd known it had been no more than a lazy grab at the repartee they'd shared in their younger years, before their relationship had been burdened by bigger betrayals than a toy stolen or a secret told. 

"Abe," she said simply and he had seen she wasn't angry with him at all. He'd mistaken her sincerity for severity. "My loyalty is to the king above all else-- but my son. It’s been so since first I knew he grew inside me." When she had abandoned David to his fate and Jack to his own, fleeing under Rose's protection to the mountains. Saving herself and her child had not been a pragmatic but an emotional decision for his sister, he understood now and felt foolish and guilty for the acorn of resentment he'd still harboured about her flight.

He thought then of their own parents and their endless machinations, the way they'd maneuvered him and Michelle to grab, gain, and keep power, and of how blessed Abe was. He'd thought of tainted blood and prayed then that David's blood had diluted whatever corruption the Benjamin blood carried.

"First for me is Abe and will always be. David trusts that as he trusts you. For you--" Michelle drew a deep breath and continued. "There's no one else, is there? No one above him."

Jack had said nothing for a long moment. His breath was caught in his throat, unable to lie to his sister in the face of her sincerity and unwilling to speak a truth which in that moment felt like its own kind of blow to Michelle. She'd taken pity on him then, smiling an unfamiliar smile, a queenly smile, and directing his attention to the vines of green grapes ripening in the sun. As they'd eaten, he was left with the sensation of having dodged a kind of bullet.

 

-

 

Now, standing in his father’s garden, behind the house where his father had died easily and asleep, Jack holds his motivations up to the afternoon light. He finds them not bulletproof or riddled with hairline cracks, but shot through with gold. Here, another truth reveals itself. The interests Jack puts above all else are not Gilboa's and they are not his own. They are David Shepherd's.

And David Shepherd speaks.

"You don't want to do this." David's voice cracks as he says it but he's right. Always. Or not always, but often enough for the times he's wrong not to matter. _My king_ , his traitorous, tender mind whispers.

"What I want doesn't matter," Jack spits. "That's not how this works."

"What about God?" David’s voice cracks again and Jack realizes with slow-mounting horror that David is crying. "God wants you, Jack."

The tears falling down David's cheeks are huge, un-kingly-- the fat, silent kind that Abe still cries when he's over-tired but doesn't want to disturb an important dinner by asking to go to bed. But there are never any hissed recriminations in his ears for Prince Abe as his father orders an aid to take him to bed. No, the good king excuses himself and takes Abe in his arms, dries his tears and carries him to bed. The cabinet ministers and dignitaries can wait.

Jack sneers. He pulls his shoulders back, steals some steel from the spines of the woman and boy inside his father’s house, and prepares to rush David. "God told you that, did He?”

Long for it as he might, Jack has never felt God’s presence. As a child he’d thought it would come with kingship. All he feels now is hung-over, hollowed-out. His wrist bone, of all things, itches slightly.

David’s voice is panicked and young. "No, but I know he does. I know he does, he must, because I--"

He stops suddenly, transfixed by something just to the left of barrel of the gun. Jack follows his eyes.

There, on the curve of Jack's wrist, sits a small orange butterfly.

"Don't do this," David says and as he says it, another butterfly lands, right on the shining barrel of Jack's gun.

The sound rips out of Jack, "oh God."

A few more land on his hands, then many, the sun nearly blocked out by them as they flutter down on his ears, his nose, his shoulders, the dark crown of his head.

He'd thought they were David's, the winged monarchs that made up his god-chosen crown, they're so alike, but not quite identical. These are slightly smaller and there, on the bottom half of its wings, are two curved bisecting lines.

He looks at David, who says, voice tinged with wonder, his eyes shining, his face wet, " _Limenitis archippus._ The viceroy butterfly," and Jack drops the gun.

Amidst the flutter of orange-gold wings, Jack sways on his feet and David steps forward into it to catch him, one hand on Jack's slumping shoulder, the other around the back of his neck.

"My father is dead," Jack says, but what he means is _: I didn't get to kill my father._ What he means is _: I didn't get to say goodbye._

"Thank God," says David, his face against damp against Jack's, his lips pressing into Jack's cheek, one, twice, three times. He says it again, "Thank God, Jack." His mouth is against Jack’s forehead, the sharp bone below Jack’s ear.

Jack’s breath catches. They do not touch-- have not touched in anything but official capacities since the last time Jack hugged him, when their positions were reversed, those brief, cursed moments when Jack was king, in title and intention at least. Gone is the time when Prince Jack could sling a fraternal arm around his shoulder or toss a petulant punch with impunity. Now: handshakes between a king and his advisor, perfunctory hugs between brothers-in-law during celebrations. They don't do this.

David moves back a little, but he's still so close he's almost cross-eyed. His hands are bracing Jack's face.

“I want you—“ David begins, but rather than continuing, he breathes in as if it’s the end of his sentence. Jack knows that can’t be it. He remains motionless, waiting for the rest.

Finally, after what feels like an eternity: “I want you to stand beside me at the Festival of the People. As a member of the royal family.”

"Okay," Jack says. "On one condition."

"Anything, Jack. Name it."

One of Jack's butterflies lands on a blond eyebrow. David blinks reflexively but the butterfly stays stubbornly perched. HIs brow furrows and it still doesn't fly away. When Jack reaches up to run his thumb along David's eyebrow, to brush it away, it flutters onto his finger, tiny legs braced around his knuckle like a ring. "You never call me Jack again."

David starts laughing first, eyes all light and gold, and when he leans forward, presses a quick kiss to Jack's mouth between chuckles, Jack can't help but join in.

"Deal," David says.

The butterfly is still on his finger.

 

-

 

There are some concessions Jack has always refused to make, even for Michelle and David. He will not take rooms in the palace, though falling asleep in his office is an all-too-frequent occurrence. He will not attend parties or gatherings when the press have been invited. And he will not take public office.

The first proper fight Jack and David had post-Silas was about that last one.

It hadn't been long after Coronation Day but it had been just long enough that the empty seats in David's cabinet were causing a bit of a stir. Michelle's position as Minister of Health had been a given but most of David's staff is made up of those who served him in Gath, battle-hardened and still rough around the edges-- to catch them sharing stories and reminiscing with David is to feel an uncomfortable twist in his stomach, a sudden flash of the window of his prison. Even most of the Gilboans among David’s inner circle are ill-suited to public office and someone had to sort through those who are suited, to make certain their support is genuine.

Jack had handed David his list of suggested nominations for cabinet ministers, nine women who are sharp, qualified, loyal, and, most importantly, thoroughly vetted by Jack.

Jack dropped into the chair opposite David's, working to watch him without watching as he studied Jack's selections. There were two glasses of amber liquid on the table between them and Jack wordlessly knocked his back. The scotch was very old and very good, which had made Jack suspicious. David had no palate for whiskey-- or anything, honestly-- and couldn't distinguish between the absurdly good ones he so often received as gifts and the shitty contraband they'd both drank as young soldiers.

Then this whiskey had been selected with Jack in mind.

Then David wanted him amenable. 

The beginnings of something anxious had burned down his throat, like the whiskey had left a contrail. He’d been tempted to pour himself another few fingers worth, but decided against it and only partially to be contrary. He might as well meet whatever this was head on and relatively sober: "What do you think?"

David had looked up slowly from the dossier and smiled at him, "I don't know how I didn't think of Eliza for Trade myself. And Abigail for Defense."

"From what I've seen she's unshakeable, she has an in-depth understanding of political process, and she has the best mind for strategy I've seen." Jack had smirked, "Besides my own, of course."

David had sipped his scotch, wincing reflexively as he always did then-- though by now Jack has long since trained him out of it. The two of them had gotten ruinously drunk on drills Jack had set up, wherein they'd both had to do a shot for every time David failed to drink without wincing and woken up pretzeled onto the couch in the David's study, half-convinced they were dead and half-hoping they'd die rather than survive their hangovers, the trauma of which had done what the drills had failed to do and cured him of that un-kingly wince-- and said mildly, "Well, she had a good teacher."

His eyes were steady on Jack as he said it, blue eyes black in the dim of the study. Jack had felt an increasingly familiar rush of pleasure and he'd rolled his eyes to cover the grin tugging at his mouth. He'd felt warm all over.

Jack had realized then that at some point, the approval he'd sought from David had become less about strengthening his position in the royal household and more about this: David's face warm and lit by firelight, their heads bent together in commiseration. The warmth he felt was eaten then by a hungry rush of mounting panic and he had quite naturally deflected: "And my suggestion for Minister of Health?"

David laughed. Jack hadn't joined in, but it was a near thing.

"She's untested, I know, but give her a shot." Michelle had been the obvious and unspoken choice, and not just by virtue of being queen. Her plans for a complete overhaul of the healthcare system would require an immense amount of work but they were viable and could significantly improve the lives of countless citizens. It still gives Jack comfort to think of this as being their family's most lasting legacy. "Not to mention, I heard she gave the last king hell."

"I'll take your counsel, Jack. This cabinet is perfect, except it's missing someone."

David had been serious suddenly. Jack's head, syrupy from the whiskey, had caught up a beat too late and he'd lost control of the conversation. "The nation needs you on this cabinet, Jack. And I-" He'd paused then and leaned up and out his chair, bracing his hands on the table and leaned over it, into Jack's space.

"I want you at my side," he'd said, soft and steady, and he'd stayed there as the words settled between them, a head taller than Jack for once.

Jack had been making a concerted effort to think of David as King, not usurper or naive soldier or the puppy who trailed after his sister, those roles from his old life, and to treat him with the respect that his station commands. In that drawn-out moment David had been not once, but twice a king, had been every king Jack had ever hated. Jack had wanted to hit them all.  

"Why can't you give this up? I have denied you nothing but this and you still cannot accept it. Are you already so spoiled and smug? It took Silas years to--" Jack had grasped for composure but he near trembled with desire to lash out. 

"You deny yourself, Jack. Not me." There was a beat where David paused, a beat where, had it stretched out long enough, Jack might have calmed himself and rebutted reasonably. But David had kept going: "You give up too easily." 

He had thought then of a conversation with his father, the king, on the senate steps and a hundred after that, more if his father's one-sided railings at Jack in the late days of his reign could be considered conversations. He'd come to remind Jack that he would have been shot for treason or locked away in darkness if not for the king’s mercy. The kind of mercy that imprisoned Jack in a front-facing room with a large window, that made a very public spectacle of crushing Jack under his thumb.

"I do not deny myself. Not anymore," Jack hissed. "And this is self-preservation, not self-denial," and his fist swung out without clear thought. He was filled to the brim with righteous rage and a fierce pride at finally doing what he'd once promised himself nightly he would do at the first opportunity. He had struck Silas. He had struck David. He had struck the king.

Then the rage had emptied, quickly as it had filled him. Jack had looked from the door to David, sprawled on the carpet from his punch, panicked. _This is it then_ , Jack had thought as he waited for David's guards to storm in and arrest him for treason. His egg basket cracked on the floor. 

David's shoulders had shaken and for one terrible moment Jack had thought he was weeping. But no. Jack's fist had split David's bottom lip and he'd been chuckling as he wiped it. His grin had split his lip further and he tongued the cut while he spoke. "I was wondering if you were ever gonna do that again."

"Do what? Commit treason?" Jack's voice shook, but the first strains of relief were creeping in as David didn't call his guards. 

Instead David had pulled himself back into his chair and knocked back his remaining scotch. "Tell me when I'm being idiot. I remember what you said, on our first mission together: commander is better than king. I think that's necessary in battle, but in governing-- I need someone who'll tell me when I'm wrong, Jack. Someone who is able to make decisions in my stead, and if anything happens, can govern until Abe is ready."

"I can do that first part for you, David, and happily. But the second part I cannot agree to. I won't be a public figure again."

"Then at least take up your old position in the military. Abigail's been asking for you incessantly and it's only right that we reinstate--"

"Let this go, David," Jack had warned as he'd his blood rise again. "Do you miss fighting that much?"

David smiled ruefully. "Yes. In some ways, things were simpler. Decisions and results were immediate. I knew whether I was right or wrong as soon as I took action. Now a wrong choice can seem right today and still become a disaster years from now."

Jack sat then too, and focused on the sound of David's voice as he spoke, worked on regulating his breathing.

When he finally trusted himself to speak, Jack had said: "You don't hear them," _Because I keep it from you_ , "but the people have not forgotten what Prince Jack did. That's still who I am to them. And will always be-- unlike Michelle I can't trade in my name for one gleaming and untarnished."

In the long moment of silence that followed, Jack had been able to hear the quiet shuffling of the two guards posted outside the study. If he could hear them, they’d certainly been able to hear Jack and David’s shouting and the thump of David’s body. Then David had forbidden them from interrupting regardless of what they’d overheard. His trust in Jack was as worrying as it was flattering.

He'd opened his mouth to say something, apologize perhaps but David beat him to it: "Truth be told, I always thought your name a little funny. Jack being short for Jonathan."

"It wasn't always," Jack said. "I was born Jonathan but soon it was Jat, because Michelle couldn't say Jonathan." Michelle had been slow to speak, a quiet watcher to Jack's chattering bundle of energy, his little shadow. He'd called her Michelle, sister, princess. His parents hung on Michelle's slightest clumsy word and so Jat had stuck. He'd loved it. "And that became Jack and still was when my father became king. I always--" He'd been caught by the softness of David's eyes, the laziness of his smile. "You've heard this story before?"

David had laughed and that was soft too. "A version of it, yes, from Michelle. What were you going to say?"

He studied the lax, open lines of David's body as he sat, and then continued. "I always thought I would be Jonathan again someday. When I-- King Jack doesn't exactly scream of gravitas."

"You still can be," David had said, in the same tone of voice that he’d said, _The butterflies will come_. Jack had known better than to believe, but David hadn’t.

 

-

 

"You all know Jack Benjamin. You know who his father was." A grumble rises from the crowd. Jack is accustomed to this by now, bored by it. David's voice rises over the din, sure. "Who he once was."

"I understand your trepidation. But our nation as we know it today is built upon forgiveness, upon a willingness to open our minds and see new possibilities. I ask you to forgive the wounds of the past, unless there are any among you who have never strayed from the right. Sadly, if there are, I cannot count myself among you."

Jack has seen David address his people from here countless times, watched the back of his head alight with high sun as he spoke. Standing out here next to him, it’s different, more and less real. The sun that shines on David should blind him, but David barely squints. His voice rings out, pure and certain, and his words fall on the crowd like a touch. A laying on of hands.

"My most trusted advisor, voice of my conscience," he continues. Jack suppresses a scoff. "Brother. Friend.”

Michelle catches his eye from David’s other side and gifts him with a slight quirk of her lips. It’s enough to help steady his breathing.

“He is worthy of your respect. He has more than earned mine." David turns to look at Jack then, stood close enough to him that their shoulders brush, the elegant whoosh of fabric from suits Jack has chosen for them.

David smiles at him, small and private, before turning back toward his people with his wide, golden grin.

Jack swallows, feels something like sunlight thrumming in his veins.

"He is reborn: Jonathan."

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Well, this only took me five years! I'm going to go read all the fic I wouldn't let myself read in the meantime. Apologies and thanks to everyone who listened to me whine and didn't laugh in my face when I said I'd finish this eventually. Jack deserved better.


End file.
